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Memory lane Loughery recalls his days with the Nets in the ABAPosted: Thursday June 06, 2002 9:22 AM
Kevin Loughery and Julius Erving became Nets in the same year, 1973. Together, they guided the team to two ABA championships. I came to the Nets from Philadelphia as a player-coach with very little experience. Dave DeBusschere was the general manager, but he played another year with the Knicks, so I was basically running the basketball operations. I was on vacation in Ocean City, Md., that first summer when I got a call asking me to come back early. I said, "I just got here." But they said, "We just got Dr. J." So I was delighted to cut the trip short. That transaction led to two titles, one in 1974 and the other in 1976, the last one in the ABA. The first championship team was by far the better of the two. We were the best team in the league. But the last one was Dr. J doing almost everything. That was a strange year, because teams were folding during that last regular season. We must have played Denver 21 times. Then we were down 20-something points with about 15 minutes left in the sixth game at home, and we came back and won the game and the championship. It was a great story. But the celebration that followed that last title was a lot different from the ones NBA teams throw now. The whole team went to a party at a local restaurant. In those days, players, coaches and the other people associated with the team were much closer than they are today. It truly was like a family, so it was just fun being together. And it was a good thing we were close, because our championships didn't really create much excitement. We had fans, but not many. We were on Long Island, which was New York Knick territory, and the ABA wasn't considered a viable league. But it didn't take long for everybody to realize how good the league was. In the first All-Star Game after the merger, half the players were former ABA players. I still see a lot of people from those years. Rod Thorn, who's now the president of the Nets, was my assistant coach. Obviously I see Dr. J a lot, because he's around a lot of functions. We had a reunion two years ago, and I got to see everybody. It was fun to reminisce -- the stories got bigger, and the lies got better.
Kevin Loughery is a former NBA player and head coach. His column appears weekly on CNNSI.com
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